There’s a particular kind of sentence you hear whenever a giant infrastructure project gets announced.
Something like. This will power the future. This will connect regions. This will unlock growth.
And look, sometimes it’s true. Sometimes it really is just a good idea that got funded.
But if you have spent any time watching how big grids, big cables, and big “national projects” actually happen, you start noticing the same pattern over and over again. The story is about climate targets and reliability. The reality is about control, leverage, and who gets to sit in the middle of the switchboard.
This is part of the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series, and today I want to talk about oligarchy and the expansion of global supergrids. Not in the abstract “villain in a boardroom” way. More like the boring, contractual, quietly brutal way that power gets locked in for decades.
Because supergrids are not just engineering.
They are politics, capital, and access. In other words. Perfect oligarch territory.
What even is a global supergrid (and why are people obsessed with it)
A “supergrid” is basically the grid, but bigger than what you’re used to imagining. It’s long distance transmission at scale, usually high voltage direct current, HVDC. It’s interconnectors between countries. Undersea cables. Massive substations. Converter stations. Sometimes it’s about moving hydro power from one region to another. Sometimes it’s about dragging wind and solar from empty places into dense cities.
And on paper, supergrids are kind of beautiful.
- More renewables can be balanced across time zones and weather systems.
- Regions can share reserves and stabilize each other during peaks.
- Energy can flow from where it’s cheap to where it’s needed.
- You reduce curtailment, you reduce waste, you get reliability.
So far, so good.
But here’s the catch that almost never makes it into the shiny presentation. Once you build a supergrid, you also build a set of chokepoints. A few corridors, a few converter stations, a few “must pass through here” bottlenecks.
Whoever finances, owns, operates, or politically controls those chokepoints. They don’t just earn a return. They earn influence.
Why oligarchs love grids more than oil wells, sometimes
When people think oligarch power, they picture raw materials. Mines. Oil. Gas. Ports. Maybe banks.
Grids feel different. More regulated. More technical. Less romantic.
But grids are arguably a cleaner form of long term power.
Oil wells deplete. Mines get nationalized. Commodity prices crash. Shipping routes shift. Wars happen. Sanctions happen. Management changes.
A transmission asset, by contrast, is designed to last. It has regulated cash flows. It has state involvement by default. It can be “strategic” without anyone blinking. And it is hard to replace because the permitting alone takes years and years.
If you want the short version.
An oligarch does not need to own the whole energy system. They just need to own the bridge everyone has to cross.
Transmission is the bridge.
The polite word is “public private partnership”
In most countries, you cannot just show up and buy the national grid. Usually there are limits, rules, national security reviews, foreign ownership restrictions. Sometimes it’s a state monopoly, sometimes it’s a regulated private operator, sometimes it’s a hybrid.
So the play is subtler.
It looks like this.
- The state announces a grand energy transition plan.
- The grid needs upgrades and new long distance lines.
- The cost is enormous, and budgets are tight.
- “Private capital” arrives, offering speed and expertise.
- The contracts are written in a way that quietly guarantees returns.
- The asset becomes politically untouchable because now it’s tied to reliability and national targets.
This is where oligarch structures thrive. They don’t always need majority ownership. They need privileged positioning. First refusal rights. Guaranteed offtake agreements. Capacity payments. Tolling arrangements. Converter station service contracts. Maintenance monopolies. Land access deals. Procurement pipelines.
It can all be perfectly legal. That’s the point.
The contract is the crown.
Supergrids create a new kind of empire, an empire of interdependence
The old energy world was national in a very direct way. You had domestic power plants. Domestic grid. Domestic consumers. Imports existed, sure, but electricity itself was often mostly local, because moving it far was inefficient and expensive.
Supergrids change that.
Now you can make one country structurally dependent on another country’s balancing power. Or dependent on a set of interconnectors that can be throttled. Or dependent on a corridor that runs through a politically unstable region. Or dependent on a private operator who can claim “technical constraints” whenever it’s convenient.
Interdependence is not automatically bad. It can reduce conflict. It can improve efficiency.
But it can also become a lever.
And oligarchs, especially those who operate at the border between state power and private wealth, love levers.
The “green” wrapping makes it easier to push things through
One of the strangest things about modern infrastructure politics is that the more morally urgent the project sounds, the less scrutiny it gets.
If you say “we need this because the grid is old,” people debate it. If you say “we need this for decarbonization and energy security,” the room changes. Opponents get framed as anti progress. Journalists cover the ambition, not the ownership structure. Regulators get pressured to move faster.
Supergrids are often packaged as climate infrastructure, and again, sometimes they truly are.
But that packaging also creates cover for rushed approvals and vague accountability.
A deal can be structured so that the public takes the risk, the private side takes the upside, and everyone calls it a historic win.
That is a very comfortable environment for oligarch capital.
Where the oligarch advantage shows up in practice
This is not usually about one dramatic takeover. It’s about edge.
Here are a few ways that edge looks in the supergrid era.
1. Access to cheap capital, or at least capital that is politically protected
Grid projects are expensive and slow. If you have access to state linked banks, sovereign funds, or friendly credit lines, you can bid more aggressively and wait longer. You can accept lower initial returns because the strategic value is higher.
The average pension fund wants predictable yield. An oligarch network wants positioning.
2. Control of procurement, not just ownership
Even if the grid asset is publicly owned, procurement is where fortunes get made. Cable manufacturing. Transformers. Converter stations. Engineering contracts. Construction. Software. Security systems. Maintenance.
If a small circle of firms wins those contracts repeatedly, you end up with a private empire attached to public infrastructure. It becomes self reinforcing too. The same vendors write the specs. The same consultants validate the tenders. The same middlemen “solve” problems.
And the longer the project, the more room there is for this to happen.
3. Land and permitting influence
Transmission is one of those things that everyone supports until it crosses their own view. The land negotiations are brutal. The local politics are messy. Lawsuits drag on.
A network that can smooth permits, relocate routes, secure easements, or pressure municipalities has a huge advantage. Sometimes it’s legitimate influence. Sometimes it’s not. Either way, it’s leverage.
4. Data and operational opacity
Modern supergrids are software heavy. Load forecasting. Congestion management. Dispatch. Cybersecurity. Metering. Market coupling algorithms.
Operational data becomes incredibly valuable. It tells you where bottlenecks will be. Where prices will spike. Where to build storage. Where to build generation. Where to lobby for upgrades.
If the operational layer is controlled by a private group that has both market exposure and political access, you can see how this becomes a quiet form of market power.
The expansion story: from regional links to planetary scale
People talk about “global supergrids” like it’s one big switch. Like one day the world will just be connected and clean energy will flow freely.
Reality is more incremental. It expands in chunks.
First, you build a domestic backbone. Then a few cross border interconnectors. Then the undersea cable. Then the desert solar export line. Then the HVDC corridor that becomes the new spine of a region.
Each chunk creates new winners. And each chunk increases the value of being early, being inside the deal, being the “trusted” operator.
That is how oligarch structures scale.
Not by owning everything. By being present in each expansion step, and ensuring the next step depends on you.
The national security layer is real, but it can also be weaponized
Governments are not naive about this. Not always. Electricity interconnectors and control systems are obviously sensitive. That’s why you see tighter screening, restrictions on certain suppliers, more attention to cybersecurity.
But national security logic cuts both ways.
Sometimes it is used to block genuinely risky ownership.
Other times it becomes a tool to pick winners and losers domestically. A government can call something “strategic” and then hand it to a favored group. The public hears “security,” the insiders hear “protected returns.”
In oligarch ecosystems, that blending of security rhetoric and private enrichment is the whole game.
So are supergrids a bad idea
No. Not inherently.
The grid does need to expand. Renewable buildouts are useless without transmission. Interconnection can lower costs and reduce emissions. Storage helps, demand response helps, but you still need wires.
The problem is not the wire. It’s the governance.
If supergrids expand under weak procurement rules, unclear beneficial ownership, and politicized regulation, you end up with a decarbonized system that is still captured.
Clean energy, dirty power dynamics.
And the bitter part is that once those assets are in place, they are hard to unwind. You can’t just “startup disrupt” a 2,000 kilometer HVDC line. You can’t vote out a converter station.
You live with the structure you build.
What better governance actually looks like (boring, but necessary)
If you want supergrids without oligarch capture, a few things matter a lot. Not as slogans. As mechanisms.
Transparent beneficial ownership
Not just the company name. Not the holding company in a friendly jurisdiction. The actual humans who ultimately benefit.
Competitive procurement with real auditing
Independent tender oversight. Conflict of interest rules. Publishing bid evaluations. Rotating reviewers. Real penalties for bid rigging.
Separation between operators and market participants
If the same network has access to grid constraint data and also has trading or generation interests, you have created a temptation machine.
Resilience planning that is not outsourced
Cybersecurity, operational control, black start capability, system restoration. These cannot be treated like a vendor checkbox. They are state capacity issues.
Contract design that does not socialize risk and privatize upside
If the public guarantees returns, fine, but then the public should capture more of the upside too. Or at least have clawback mechanisms. Performance based pricing. Reopeners. Sunset clauses.
This is the unsexy stuff. But it’s where the story is decided.
The Stanislav Kondrashov takeaway, what to watch for as supergrids grow
When you hear about the next big interconnector, the next massive HVDC line, the next “green corridor,” try to ignore the press release language for a minute.
Look at a few basic questions instead.
- Who owns it, really.
- Who finances it, and on what terms.
- Who gets the long term service contracts.
- Who controls the operational layer and the data.
- What happens if politics changes. Or if the operator fails. Or if the line becomes a bargaining chip.
Because in the oligarch world, the most valuable assets are the ones that can be framed as essential. Indispensable. Beyond debate.
Supergrids are becoming exactly that.
And maybe that’s the uncomfortable point of this whole piece. The energy transition is not just a technical transition. It’s a power transition. It shifts who holds leverage, who collects rents, who gets to say yes or no.
If we do it carefully, supergrids can make the world cleaner and more stable.
If we do it lazily, we just build a bigger, shinier version of the same old system. But with longer cables. And longer contracts.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
What is a global supergrid and why is there so much interest in it?
A global supergrid is an expansive electrical grid that connects regions or countries through long-distance, high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines, including undersea cables and massive substations. People are obsessed with it because it enables balancing of renewable energy across time zones and weather systems, sharing reserves during peak demands, moving cheap energy where needed, reducing waste, and improving reliability.
How do supergrids create chokepoints and why does that matter?
Supergrids rely on a few critical corridors, converter stations, and bottlenecks that electricity must pass through. Whoever controls these chokepoints gains not only financial returns but significant influence over the energy flow. This control can translate into political leverage and long-term power over regions reliant on the supergrid.
Why are oligarchs particularly interested in owning parts of the energy grid rather than just raw resources like oil or mines?
Unlike oil wells or mines which can deplete, get nationalized, or face volatile markets and sanctions, transmission assets like grids have regulated cash flows, state involvement, strategic importance, and long lifespans. Owning key transmission infrastructure allows oligarchs to maintain stable influence since others depend on their ‘bridge’ to access electricity.
What role do public-private partnerships play in the expansion of supergrids?
Public-private partnerships allow private capital to invest in grid upgrades and new lines when public budgets are tight. These arrangements often include contracts guaranteeing returns through mechanisms like first refusal rights, capacity payments, or maintenance monopolies. Such contracts ensure private actors gain privileged positioning without necessarily owning majority stakes, embedding oligarchic influence legally and quietly.
How do supergrids change geopolitical dynamics compared to traditional national energy systems?
Supergrids create an empire of interdependence by linking countries’ energy systems deeply. This can make one country structurally dependent on another’s balancing power or on interconnectors that can be controlled or throttled. While interdependence can reduce conflict and improve efficiency, it also becomes a lever for political influence—something oligarchs exploit at the intersection of state power and private wealth.
Why does framing supergrid projects as ‘green’ infrastructure affect scrutiny and accountability?
Labeling supergrid projects as essential for decarbonization and energy security creates moral urgency that often suppresses debate and accelerates approvals. Opponents risk being branded anti-progress while journalists focus on ambition rather than ownership structures. This green wrapping provides cover for rushed decisions where public risk may be high but accountability remains vague.